Neopets Puzzle Adventure - Wii
Ages: Everyone

It took me forever to understand this game. I kept looking for the RPG action. I finally realized that it is a Reversi-type board game where you can reverse the color of tiles when you place your color in the front and back end of a single or a line of your opponents color. Neopets add modifications based upon actions performed by your friendly Petpets and a Shockwave - which reorganizes the whole board. These Petpets are earned by winning battles and will do things like reversing the color of a tile, exchanging tiles, or keeping a tile from changing. This is the Battle sequence and takes up most of the game. There are also a number of board-type mini-games. Don't look further for any RPG.

You can tell that this is the up-scale version of the game - instead of doing favors for pets - you are "saving the world'". You have 100 Neopets to choose from instead of 25 - the opening directions stress the importance of selecting your Neopet - its color and gender will effect its ability. There are more mini-games, but not the Draw one from the DS version. Battles and mini-games are available from the Main menu at starting. Scoring is more complex. The stats are: Strength, Defense and Movement, and there are gems on the board with colors to indicate which is which. I won plenty of each - but to what avail? Getting more Petpets and eventually unlocking a code to use at the Neopet website for clothes for my pet? And all this finagling unduly complicates the battle section.

I was wondering why PuzzleQuest: Challenge of the Warlords was so successful. I realized that the board for Warlords had eight different icons and so your strategy for play was all there on the board. Neopets starts out with only two icons and to bring in the RPG effect it has to import effects into Reversi which are not there, making the Battle too complicated and the RPG part, unsatisfying.

Bringing in other players would add the flavor of competition. Played alone - Reversi was always a compelling game. If machines are not involved in your choice - I would suggest the DS version. The game is more appropriate for that platform.

Fun Factor: Battle game unnecessarily complicated
Female Factor: There are female Neopets
Player Friendly: Good manual clear descriptions - info on Saves plus drawing of remote.

Reviewed by: Editor - 01/09